BOOK OF THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 21 



Lavinia Cortright has only had a garden for half a 

 dozen summers, and consults me as a veteran, yet I'm 

 discovering quite as much from her experiments as she 

 from mine. Last winter, when seed-catalogue time came 

 round, and we met daily and scorched our shoes before 

 the fire, drinking a great deal too much tea in the ex- 

 citement of making out our lists, we resolved to form a 

 horticulture society of only three members, of which 

 she elected me the recording secretary, to be called 

 "The Garden, You, and I." 



We expect to have a variety of experiences this 

 season, and frequent meetings both actual and by pen, 

 for Lavinia, in combination with Horace and Sylvia 

 Bradford, last year built a tiny shore cottage, three 

 miles up the coast, at Gray Rocks, where they are go- 

 ing for alternate weeks or days as the mood seizes 

 them, and they mean to try experiments with 

 real seashore gardening, while Evan proposes that we 

 should combine pleasure with business in a way to 

 make frequent vacations possible and take driving trips 

 together to many lovely gardens both large and small, 

 to our mutual benefit, his eyes being open to construc- 

 tion and landscape effect, and mine to the soul of the 

 garden, as it were ; for he is pleased to say that a woman 

 can grasp and translate this more easily and fully than 



